Indi Hartwell was one of the wrestlers released late last year by WWE and since then she has wrestled on the indies before signing a contract with TNA. In an interesting situation, Hartwell (real name Samantha De Martin) wrestled under the “Indi Hartwell” moniker prior to joining WWE but then turned over rights to the name in order to use it with the company. However, after her release and subsequent signing with TNA, she continues to use “Indi Hartwell” which she detailed to Chris Van Vliet only is possible after WWE gave her the name back when she asked.

“I just asked. Well, this is how it went. So I’ve had this name my whole wrestling career. When I started at NXT, when you start wrestling on live events, they make you wrestle under your real name. So I wrestled under my real name for a bit, and then I think I had a dark match at NXT. I just asked Road Dogg, ‘Can I be Indi Hartwell for this?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll ask. Why not?’ Then they let me be Indi Hartwell for the dark match and then it kind of just kept going. Then I got on TV with it. I got my action figure with that name. I got in the game with that name.”

“Then I think it was when NXT 2.0 started. They went through that whole weird thing of you can’t have your real name, and you also can’t have a name that we don’t own. So they gave me the option to change my name or sell it to them. So I sold it to them, and then it was always in the back of my mind, if I get released, what name am I going to be? That’s a big deal to me. So then when I got the call that I was being released, they said, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re releasing you.’ I said, ‘Okay, cool. So I sold my name to the company. Is there any way I can get that back?’ Then we got it all figured out. I got the rights and stuff to it. I’m very lucky.”